In the display and marketing of a wide variety of merchandise, it is common practice to utilize apertured panel board, to which are attached a plurality of merchandise display hooks. In the beginning, such merchandise display hooks typically were formed of all-metal construction, sometimes being formed entirely of metal wire and sometimes having a wire hook portion secured to a metal plate for mounting on a panel board. Conventional merchandise display hooks include an outwardly extending merchandise support arm, typically with an upturned outer end and frequently provided with a ball-like enlargement at the outer extremity for safety purposes. At the inner end, the hook is provided with a pair of spaced, upturned L-shaped lugs, which are received in an adjacent pair of openings in an apertured panel board for mounting of the hook on the panel.
In recent periods, there has been a developing interest in reducing the manufacturing cost of merchandise display hooks through the use of molded plastic base members, which can be assembled with a pre-formed wire hook section. The molded plastic base is formed with an upwardly opening socket, to receive a downward extension of the wire member, and integral plastic lugs extend rearward from the base member for reception in the panel apertures. Representative of such previous proposals, but by no means representing an exhaustive list, are the Lucietto, et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,452,954, the Silver U.S. Pat. No. 3,897,926, the Gibbons U.S. Pat. No. 4,405,110, the Thalenfeld U.S. Pat. No. 4,474,351 and the Thalenfeld U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,481. The latter two examples are owned by Trion Industries Inc., Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Assembly of the wire display elements to the plastic base portions historically has required a rather laborious manual assembly operation. Accordingly, in order to minimize the cost of the product from the manufacturer, it has been the custom of the trade to furnish the two-part, plastic base hooks to the customer in unassembled form. In other words, the customer receives a specified number of hook components, consisting of the desired number of wire hook elements and an equal number of plastic bases. Typically, the customer's personnel assemble the hooks and bases individually as they are installed on the display panel. Quite obviously, it requires a more or less equivalent number of man hours to assemble the two-part hook devices, whether the assembly is done by the original manufacturer or by the customer during installation. Nevertheless, the customer has historically been more willing to accept the labor cost during the setup and installation of a merchandise display than to accept the additional cost from the manufacturer.
The present invention represents a significant breakthrough in the art of manufacture and marketing of two-part plastic base merchandise display hooks in that it becomes possible, using the invention, for the manufacturer to preassemble and ship to the customer already assembled hooks at a cost which is actually less than the cost of shipping to that same customer the individual unassembled components. It thus becomes possible to provide to the customer a much superior product, in the form of a preassembled two-part hook, at a cost that is highly attractive to the customer in relation to previous practice.
The invention is directed in part to the provision of new methods for the formation of wire hook elements and the assembly thereof together with previously molded plastic members. The invention is also directed in part to design features of the hook itself, which accommodate and enable the hook to be manufactured and automatically preassembled on a high production, lost cost basis.
In the mass production manufacture of merchandise display hooks, it is quite customary to mass produce the hook elements from a continuous coil of wire, using multiple action wire forming machines. On such machines, wire sections of predetermined length are advanced in a step-by-step basis and the individual wire sections are cut and shaped to the desired hook-like form. The output of the machine is ejected into an appropriate container for counting, weighing, etc. To a package of a given number of pre-formed hook elements, an equivalent number of plastic bases is later added, and the package is then ready to be shipped to the customer.
In accordance with the practice of the present invention, the wire sections, are processed in a unique and advantageous manner in the wire forming machine, and the individual hook sections are retained in a precisely gripped and aligned relationship after formation of the hook to the desired configuration. Individual plastic base members, properly oriented and positioned, are fed one at a time into an assembly position, precisely aligned with respect to the hook-mounting portion of the shaped wire section. As soon as the wire section has been formed, a base member is pressed together with the hook-mounting portion of the wire to provide a finished, preassembled two-part hook, which is then ejected from the machine into the appropriate container for counting, weighing or the like.
The accomplishment of the seemingly simple objective as described in the preceding paragraph, involves a special configuration of the forming dies and of the plastic base itself, to assure proper alignment of the various elements and to accommodate the necessary assembly operations. Such reconfiguration and redesign forms a significant aspect of the present invention.
Pursuant to the invention, the wire-forming machine is provided with a special set of forming dies which are arranged, upon the infeeding of a predetermined length of wire, to grip and shape the outer end portion of the hook. The dies utilized for this purpose remain tightly closed, and serve to firmly grip and position the wire for the remainder of the operations. Immediately following gripping of the wire and shaping of its outer end, a movable cutting die is actuated to sever the wire to its desired length. The cutting die is especially shaped and configured to engage the trailing end of the wire after cutting and, in a continuous motion, to guide and bend the end of the wire to form the hook-mounting portion thereof. To this end, the movable cutting die is grooved along one face so that, during its continued motion for bending of the wire, it closely confines and guides the wire and assures a high degree of positional accuracy in the finished wire form.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the wire-forming machine is provided with a special, retractable bend-forming element, which is projectable into a position in contact or near contact with the wire, on the opposite side thereof from the movable cutting die. As the movable cutting die completes the severing of the wire and commences the bending thereof, the retractable bend-forming member serves as a fulcrum about which wire is bent. Immediately thereafter, the retractable bend-forming member is withdrawn, as is the movable cutting die, to enable a plastic base member to be assembled with the just-formed hook-mounting section.
In accordance with another significant aspect of the invention, the plastic base member itself is redesigned to accommodate automatic feeding and handling, so that it may be precisely aligned with and assembled to the formed wire section. To this end, the plastic base member is molded in a single piece and is shaped and configured to provide, in effect, a flat, panel-like portion of generally rectangular configuration. A body portion projects forwardly from the panel-like portion and is provided with an open socket for the snug reception of the hook-mounting portion of the wire. A pair of spaced, L-shaped mounting lugs project rearwardly from the back face of the panel-like portion. Importantly, both the body portion, projecting from the front face of the panel portion, and the L-shaped lugs, projecting from the rear face, are confined within the center area of the panel portion, to provide for a marginal flange around the entire periphery of the base portion. This marginal flange enables automated orientation of the base members and thus their automatic feeding into a predetermined assembly position. In the assembly position, the base members are guided and confined by the marginal edge flanges, so that precise alignment of the base members is assured during the assembly operations.
The various features of the invention enable a high speed formation and assembly of the wire hook members in a wire-forming machine, to provide for high speed, automated production of preassembled hooks at an extremely low cost. The speed and reliability with which the production and assembly operations can be carried out exceeds the rate at which, heretofore, it has been possible to simply package the plastic bases together with an equivalent number of wire hooks, such that the manufacturing cost of the preassembled device is actually less than the manufacturing cost of the unassembled device according to conventional practices.
For a more complete understanding of the above and other features and advantages of the invention, reference should be made to the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention and to the accompanying drawings.